stories

Adoption is not a journey for the faint of heart, but those who endure find the greatest reward.

The Koby Family

On a chilly evening in 2003 my husband and I were on a date, headed to a Steven Curtis Chapman concert. We had no idea how that date would change our destiny forever.

During the show, Steven and his wife shared with the audience their story of adoption. They shared the video of the moment their beautiful Chinese daughter was placed in their arms and the whole auditorium welled up with tears. At that moment, Eric and I looked at one another both suddenly aware that this was to be our destiny as well.

The journey to our first daughter was filled with so many emotions. They say waiting to bring your child home through adoption is like enduring the pregnancy of an elephant because it is so long and often grueling. The vast amounts of paperwork, doctor’s visits evaluating our health, the examination of our bank accounts and lifestyle, the testing of our psychiatric stability. These were all aspects of our lives that were no longer private. If you want to adopt a child, your life becomes and open book not only to the American government, but also to the government of the country that you are adopting from.

When it was all finally done, the waiting began. The waiting is the hardest part. You want to begin your life as a parent so badly but the red tape is what drives your future and there is nothing that can change that. I remember Eric would not allow me to decorate a nursery until we had a referral for a child. He didn't want me to get my hopes up and something to go wrong only to force us to have to physically dismantle our hopes and dreams.

I was at work the day the call came. I was sitting on hall duty at the high school I worked at and an announcement came over the loud speaker for me to come down to the main office. Conferenced in on the phone was Eric, and our case worker from America World Adoption Association. At that moment our whole lives changed. We were soon off on a far away journey to bring home a little girl from Krasnoyarsk Siberia, Russia. She was fair and fragile. Her eyes had tears in them the moment we first saw her. It was her first birthday. And so in a small orphanage in a freezing city, on the other side of the world Eric and I became parents. And Julianna Faith became a Koby forever.